Ajay (AN) introduced to me the above words at Kozhikode during the mid-annual mfc meet last year. It means without fear, without hate, with love. The last one was added to the Sikh saying by AN themself.
When I met AN at the meet, I was brimming with negative energy (likely hatred) at the institutions AN represented and their politics. I projected all of those at AN too.
But we had long chats. And we ended up hugging. And it was the most useful for me.
I don’t like hating people. But I hate it when people are perpetuating and reinforcing systems of injustice. And countless experiences have taught me to be sceptical of privileged caste men who are progressing in their career without explicitly addressing these injustices.
In the larger society, there’s internalized misogyny. Where there’s an inherent hatred towards women. In the smaller society of social justice work, there is an internalized hatred towards savarna men. I have that internalized hatred. (Also towards doctors, academicians, and so on, but that’s a different post).
Except I don’t like hating people. I’ve been trying to adopt a love ethic. And this was a contradiction.
It is probably a contradiction that cannot be avoided. The world sees a lot of suffering. And the suffering doesn’t happen on its own. There are people propelling systems of oppression. And those people deserve intolerance. (Paradox of intolerance).
So to completely eliminate hate, we would need complete elimination of suffering.
Yet, my hate was sometimes being directed at the wrong people. People who were trying their best.
For example, AN above has a life story very similar to mine. Hating the violence of medical colleges, going to work with very marginalized communities, using technology in transformative ways in some places, and being stuck in larger economics of technology and health. The hatred was unjustified. And I turned to love.
After that, it was Parth’s (PS) turn. There was this day on Twitter when Cyriac Abby Philips had retweeted a casteist video and blocked everyone who called it out. I had indirectly called PS an asshole for asking me to be patient with CPA that day. (2023-12-18).
Then a few months later I apologized for calling PS an asshole. (2024-02-12)
Hello Parth.
I saw that you changed your name on Twitter. I assume that it is related to your introspection and growth on the topic of caste. I congratulate you for the same.
And on the same note I apologize for being unnecessarily mean to you on Twitter in regards to the Abby Philips situation. There are indeed many of my own biases which led to me calling you an asshole. I should have shown better behavior. I also saw that nivarana is having technical issues. I have been working on wordpress for several organizations like tribalhealth.org and saakarnataka.org
If you need technical assistance, let me know.
Unfortunately, PS had blocked me on WhatsApp and didn’t receive that message. In the same mfc meeting at Kozhikode, I suggested that a bulletin made by younger folks at mfc should have just been released as articles on nivarana.org even though I disagree with certain politics of Parth. Sebin (SG) was in the audience and asked me later as to why I disagree with PS. I told the above story and SG told me how PS’ idea is not to become a Global Health expert, but to settle in Assam taking care of palliative care needs.
So I sent that note on email. (2024-08-12)
PS replied immediately appreciating it and looking forward to working together.
Later that month, nivarana website broke down again. And this time Parth reached out to me to redeem my offer to help. I helped to get it back online. Then PS asked me to join the team.
We had a long phone call where I grilled PS about every narrative I had built in my mind. About caste, about plagiarising, about appropriation, and so on. Turns out I was wrong with my narrative on all those. I was wrong on enough counts that even if I had found something to hold PS responsible for, it wouldn’t have mattered.
I joined the nivarana team that day (2024-08-28).
It is unlikely that my emotion in all these was purely hatred. There could possibly be elements of envy too. Swathi shared a therapy insight with me once about how we envy people who are doing things we wanted to do.
There might also be frustration that society isn’t changing fast enough. I’m pretty sure I was also of the belief that “calling out” was an important aspect of social change.
That last point has been crucial. How do you reconcile calling out with love? To call someone out you’ve to be convinced they’re wrong. You’ve to refuse to “understand” where they’re coming from. You’ve to invalidate their experiences and shout above their voice. That’s how calling out works. It’s incompatible with love.
In parallel I had also been developing another way of demanding change. It involves framing every wrong as an education problem. To use the language of a loving teacher. (As I’m writing this I remember reading about “calling in” as opposed to “calling out”)
But that mindset also can’t be applied for everyone. When people who are in positions of power and have many years of life and experience over me are being problematic, it is difficult to reframe the problem as an education one. I can’t be “mothering” these weirdos.
I’ve found two more mindsets that can help in this situation.
Don’t feed the troll mindset
This one is where you consider those people as trolls, and then apply the sane advice of not feeding trolls. By engaging (even through calling out), you’re amplifying their ideas, giving them too much importance, and in general giving them fodder to continue.
Just stop engaging. Ignore. Mute. Silence.
If pen is mightier than sword, silence is mightier than pen.
I’m too busy for this shit mindset
In cancel culture debate, there’s this weird “nuance” argument made by some people (like Arundhati Roy) that it is okay to engage with the art of problematic artists. But my take has always been this:
There are literally hundreds of other pieces of art.
You don’t need to engage with problematic artists. Because there are so many more artists on the planet! And they all need your attention too. Why waste it on a problematic person?
I heard something similar from Bhumika Saraswati when I asked her about how she deals with the contradiction, she said “I don’t have the time for it.”
By doing so much more in the time that it takes us to hate others, we will be able to avoid hatred.